Tobacco Companies Caught in a Firestorm
ACCORDING to a report appearing in The New York Times of July 26, 1995, “the Justice Department has convened a grand jury in New York to investigate whether tobacco companies misrepresented to Federal regulators the contents and ill effects of cigarettes. The department is likely to convene a second panel here to investigate whether company executives lied to Congress about tobacco products.”
The basis for this? The report clarified it. In April 1994, top executives of the seven leading tobacco companies in the United States had testified under oath before a Congressional committee that “they did not think that nicotine was addictive, that cigarettes caused disease or that their companies manipulated the level of nicotine in tobacco products.”
Thereafter the roof fell in—their claims of innocence collapsed—when in June 1995, two thousand incriminating documents came to light. These documents show that tobacco researchers had spent 15 years studying nicotine’s “pharmacologic” effects on the body, brain, and behavior of smokers. Dr. Victor DeNoble, a former research scientist with one of the companies, describes the key find of the research: “The company began to realize that they could reduce the tar, but increase the nicotine, and still have the cigarette be acceptable to the smoker. After all their work, they realized that nicotine was not just calming or stimulating, but it was having its effect centrally, in the brain, and that people were smoking for brain effects.”
According to The New York Times, company studies showed that “whatever brand people smoked, they tended to get the amount of nicotine they needed by inhaling deeper, holding the smoke longer in the mouth, or smoking more cigarettes.” Company researchers attempted to make a low-tar cigarette with sufficient nicotine levels to deliver smoker satisfaction.
The documents further revealed that the tobacco company displayed an intense interest in its customers. College students were the subject of its scrutiny for more than 15 years. People in one Iowa town, including some 14-year-old smokers, were questioned about their smoking habits.
The disclosure of these research documents is seen as a boon to a coalition of lawyers launching a class-action suit against seven tobacco firms. They charge that tobacco companies concealed knowledge of nicotine’s addictive properties and manipulated nicotine levels to promote addiction. One lawyer said that no jury in the world will believe that these companies were doing this research as a hobby.
As the firestorm heats up in the developed world, the tobacco smoke blows more to the developing world. Forty years ago, virtually no women and only about 20 percent of the men in the South, or developing world, smoked. But today, 8 percent of all women and 50 percent of all men in developing countries are tobacco smokers—and that number is rising. “Smoke,” say researchers, “blows South.”
Awake! Correspondent Reports on the Trend
Our writer stationed in Brazil makes some general comments on the situation in the South. Research in the industrialized world paints an ever-more-deadly picture for the tobacco smoker. It has its effect. “Countries that have recognized the vital importance of public information are now seeing the beginnings of a decline in tobacco consumption,” reports the World Health Organization (WHO). “In the North,” adds Panos, a London-based information organization, “smoking is no longer socially acceptable in many homes, public places and work places,” and most people now realize that “smoking can kill them.” “The tobacco industry is moving South.”
By contrast, in the South, opening a new market proves to be as easy as opening a pack of cigarettes. For the tobacco industry, conditions in developing countries are tantalizing. In 3 out of 4 of the developing countries, there are no bans on advertising, and at the same time, public awareness of the dangers of smoking is low. “People are not aware of the risks because they are not told about them,” notes Panos.
To persuade young women—one of the industry’s main targets—to light up their first cigarette, advertisements “portray smoking as a glamorous fun-loving activity enjoyed by independent women.” The tobacco ads sound suspiciously similar to those used in the industrialized world half a century ago. Back then, the ads worked. Before long, says one source, 1 out of 3 women “was lighting up with male-like enthusiasm.”
Today, intensified aggressive marketing aimed at unaware women in developing countries assures that this advertising “success” of the 1920’s and 1930’s is about to be repeated. The gloomy outlook is, therefore, that millions of young females in the world’s poorer countries are presently at risk of becoming, as one observer put it, “pretty young girls in their early nicotines.”
The Prime Target
While women form one of the tobacco industry’s chief targets, young people are its prime target. Cartoon-style advertisements and cigarette logos on toys are paying off, and so is sponsorship of sporting events.
In China, reports the magazine Panoscope, young people “are taking to cigarettes in a big way.” Some 35 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds and 10 percent of 9- to 12-year-olds are smokers. In Brazil, reports the daily Folha de S. Paulo, an estimated ten million youths are smokers. Are they unaware of the dangers? “I know that smoking cigarettes is harmful,” says Rafael, a 15-year-old Brazilian boy who smokes one and a half packs of cigarettes a day, “but it’s very good.” The result of this carefree reasoning? “Every day,” reports Panos, “at least another 4,000 young people start smoking.”
The tobacco industry exports some products to the South that have a higher content of tar and nicotine than brands sold in the North. The reason is obvious. “I don’t apologize for nicotine,” said one tobacco-industry official some years ago. “It’s what brings repeat business. It’s what makes people come back.” It works. “Because of the high levels of nicotine,” confirms the Dutch publication Roken Welbeschouwd (Smoking—All Things Considered), “dependence is accomplished more quickly, and this opens opportunities to increase the consumption and sales by gradually lowering those levels.”
“The tobacco industry,” concludes Panos, “views the South as the market that will keep the industry in business.”
Lighting Up or Living On?
If you are living in a developing country, what will you do? The facts are clear. Until 1950, deaths from smoking-related diseases were negligible, but today one million people in the South are dying each year from smoking-related diseases. However, WHO warns that within three decades the yearly number of smoking-related deaths in developing countries will rise to seven million. Contrary to what the tobacco ads are telling you, cigarettes are ultimately coffin nails.
You say that you are aware of the dangers? Fine, but what will you do with that knowledge? Will you be like the smoker who had read so many terrible things about smoking that he decided to give up reading? Or will you be smart enough to see through the smoke screen put up by tobacco ads and say no to smoking? True, tobacco smoke is blowing South—but it does not have to blow your way!
[Box on page 19]
China—Number One
Zhang Hanmin, a 35-year-old worker in China, cups his hands and lights up a cigarette. “To tell the truth,” he says, “I can do without a lot of things, but cigarettes isn’t one of them.” The same can be said, it would seem, of 300 million others of Zhang’s compatriots. Since the 1980’s, China has “out-produced, out-sold and out-smoked every country.” In a recent year, “billions of cigarettes were sold to an inveterate smoking population,” making China the “world’s number one tobacco nation.”—Panoscope magazine.
[Box on page 20]
Cigarettes With a “Warranty”?
Though three million people die each year because of tobacco-related diseases, advertisements keep telling smokers that their habit is safe. One recent ad in a Brazilian magazine, for instance, trumpeted the arrival of a cigarette brand that “comes with a factory warranty.” Assures the ad: “Your car has a warranty; your TV has a warranty; your watch has a warranty. Your cigarette does too.” However, as the ads point out and chronically ill smokers can testify, the only warranty is that “smoking is harmful to health.”
[Picture on page 19]
A chief target—women in developing countries
[Credit Line]
WHO photo by L. Taylor
[Picture on page 20]
Not aware of the risks?
[Credit Line]
WHO